Bruce Rauner, political rookie, rises to claim governorship

As the first Republican to claim victory in an Illinois governor election in 16 years, Bruce Rauner is poised to fulfill at least one of his campaign promises — shaking up Springfield.

“Are you ready for a new direction? Are you ready to bring back Illinois?” Rauner asked supporters late Tuesday night. This election is about bringing back our great state.”

Even as Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn vowed not to concede until all votes were counted, Rauner moved forward. A dozen years of one-party Democratic rule would come to an end if he’s sworn in Jan. 12 --- Republicans would hold the governor’s mansion, even as Democrats retained supermajorities in the House and Senate.

As Rauner prepared Wednesday to thank voters, the first-time candidate also has said he plans to move quickly to try to ensure a lame-duck Democratic chief executive and legislature don’t enact legislation he opposes — potentially including greater protections for unionized workers and making permanent a temporary income tax hike that’s about to start expiring --- before he takes office.

“There’s so much going on, especially in the lame-duck General Assembly. We’re going to go to work and make sure nothing bad happens during the General Assembly,” Rauner told WGN 720-AM earlier this week about the return of lawmakers to Springfield for the fall session on Nov. 19.

Rauner, 58, spent nearly $28 million of his personal fortune to convince voters he was a better choice than Quinn. The rookie Republican sought to overcome an avalanche of TV attack ads that portrayed him as a ruthless businessman unconcerned with the plight of regular folks.

For his part, Rauner aired TV ads pitching himself as a guy who wears an $18 watch and drives a 21-year-old van and not a gentleman from Winnetka with seven homes, two ranches, $60 million in income last year and a $140,000 membership in a wine club.

CBS 2's Jim Williams describes the enthusiasm at the election-night headquarters of Republican Bruce Rauner, the apparent winner of the Illinois governor race.

CBS 2's Jim Williams describes the enthusiasm at the election-night headquarters of Republican Bruce Rauner, the apparent winner of the Illinois governor race.

The son of a high-ranking executive at Schaumburg-based electronics giant Motorola, Rauner was raised on the North Shore and an upscale suburb outside Phoenix.

He entered Dartmouth College in 1974. He has said he planned on majoring in chemistry and biology, reflecting an early interest in environmental sciences. He switched to economics his junior year after a course changed his thinking to a belief that business decisions affected the environment. Rauner got his master's in business administration at Harvard University in 1981.

He's repaid both institutions. In 1997, at the age of 40, Rauner became one of the youngest alumni of Harvard's business school ever to endow a name professorship. At Dartmouth, two buildings bear his name, as do a scholarship and an endowed professorship in economics.

Rauner has been married twice and has six children. He and wife Diana met at his investment firm, GTCR. Diana Rauner, who runs an early childhood education initiative, appeared in TV ads to warn voters that Democrats and entrenched interests were spreading untruths about her husband.

Rauner's rapid rise there was partly a matter of timing. In the early 1980s, armed with a freshly minted master's in business, Rauner joined GTCR in its infancy just as new IRS rules and a Reagan-era tax break on investment gains primed the private equity industry for an explosion.

GTCR grew to manage $11 billion in investments, much of it for public worker pension funds, while tapping those resources to buy and sell controlling interests in hundreds of companies as diverse as fast food, business outsourcing services and nursing homes.

Rauner chaired GTCR Golder Rauner for a quarter century before leaving in 2012. Through GTCR, Rauner became wealthy quickly and also gained prominence in the city’s business community.

Rauner has become a polarizing force in the struggle to improve education. A supporter of charter schools and vouchers to help subsidize private school tuition, Rauner also has been highly critical of teachers’ unions.

Mayor Richard M. Daley named Rauner to head the city's nonprofit convention bureau. Daley’s successor, Rahm Emanuel was helped by Rauner, who underwrote education initiatives including a $2 million donation for a bonus fund to reward principals.

Rauner has said he met Emanuel when the future mayor was making millions as an investment banker and brokered GTCR's purchase of an alarm company in 2000.

Before Rauner would take office, there’s a lame-duck session of the legislature that can potentially run until Jan. 11, the day before the new office holders are sworn in. Topping the list is the fate of the 2011 state income tax increase that Democrats approved.

During the campaign this year, Quinn refused to say if he lost the election whether he would continue to push efforts to make permanent the current 5 percent personal income tax rate that is scheduled to roll back to 3.75 percent in January.

Rauner has supported phasing out the entire increase to the state’s original 3 percent personal income tax rate during his first term. But even Rauner has acknowledged the currently scheduled January rollback — costing the state about $4 billion on an annual basis --- might be too ambitious given the state’s financial problems.

There is much on the table for Rauner, as well as Democratic legislative leaders such as veteran House Speaker Michael Madigan, given the Republican’s unashamedly pro-business agenda and campaign attacks on public employee unions.

More than electing a Democratic governor, Madigan’s priority has always been to first make sure Democrats control the Illinois House if not the entire legislature — something Rauner has hopes of eroding by electing more Republicans during a tenure as governor. That could create major strains, if not governmental gridlock, for the foreseeable future.

Rauner also castigated many lawmakers — Republicans as well as Democrats — as being part of a “corrupt” system in Springfield. Even before his election, some Republican lawmakers privately chafed over Rauner’s leadership style and proposals such as an expansion of the state’s sales tax to some services as contradicting GOP philosophy.

“It’s going to happen a lot,” Rauner said of top legislators telling him “no.” But just as he sought late in the campaign to downplay the harsh rhetoric that he used at the start of it, Rauner maintained his background in equity investor showed he was a “team builder” who also has worked with Democratic Chicago mayors and aldermen.

Rauner’s transition to governor actually began months before Election Day, said one campaign insider who was not authorized to speak publicly, with a closely held assemblage of veterans from previous Illinois Republican governors and GOP insiders. Their work included shaping the potential personnel in a Rauner cabinet.

Rauner said throughout the campaign that he was taking policy advice from associates of former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and help from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s aides. Earlier this week, Rauner said part of his immediate work was to “assemble a superstar ‘A’ team to turn the government around.”

“This matters so much to me, I’m just on a mission. I’m going right to work,” he said.